THE ECCLESIOLOGY OF THE CONSTITUTION ON
THE CHURCH, VATICAN II, ‘LUMEN GENTIUM’

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,Prefect
of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

This article appears in English translation for the first time. Cardinal
Ratzinger made the presentation at a symposium on the reception of the
Council held in Rome in November 2000. In the article the Cardinal
alerts us to the need to keep before us in a global way the Council’s
teaching on the Church, in order to appreciate its richness. Grasping
the richness of the mystery of the Church keeps us from forgetting that
the Church is a mystery of faith that no one theology or pastoral plan
can ever encompass.

At the time of the preparation for the Second Vatican Council and
during the Council itself, Cardinal Frings often told me of a small
episode which moved him deeply. Pope John XXIII had not personally
decided on themes for the Council, but invited the world's bishops to
make their suggestions, so that the subjects to be treated by the
Council might emerge from the lived experience of the universal Church.
In the German Bishops' Conference, topics were presented for the Council
but, not only in Germany but throughout the Catholic Church, it was felt
that the theme of the Council should be the Church. The First Vatican
Council was unable to complete its ecclesiological synthesis because it
had been cut short by the Franco-Prussian War, and had to leave the
chapter on the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff to stand
by itself. To offer a comprehensive vision of the Church seemed to be
the urgent task of the coming Second Vatican Council. The focus on the
Church flowed from the cultural atmosphere of the time. The end of the
First World War had brought a profound theological upheaval. Liberal
theology with its individualistic orientation was completely eclipsed,
and a new sensitivity to the Church had been arising. Not only did
Romano Guardini speak of a reawakening of the Church in souls. The
Evangelical Bishop Otto Dibelius coined the formula "the century of
the Church", and Karl Barth gave to his dogmatic synthesis of the
reformed (Calvinist) tradition the programmatic title Kirchliche
Dogmatik (Church Dogmatics). He explained that a dogmatic theology
presupposes the Church; without the Church it does not exist. Among the
members of the German Episcopal Conference there was consequently a
broad consensus that the theme of the Council should be the Church.

Speak of Church within discourse on God

But the senior Bishop of Regensburg, Bishop Buchberger, who came to
be esteemed and respected far beyond his diocese for having conceived of
the 10-volume Lexikon für Teologie und Kirche, now in its third
edition. He asked to speak—as the Archbishop
of Cologne told me—and said: "Dear
brothers, at the Council you should first of all speak about God. This
is the most important theme". The bishops were deeply impressed;
they could not ignore the seriousness of his suggestion. Of course, they
could not make up their minds simply to propose the theme of God. But an
unspoken concern lingered, at least in Cardinal Frings, who continued to
ponder how the bishops might satisfy this imperative.

The episode came to mind when I read the text of the conference given
by Johann Baptist Metz in 1993 at the time he retired from his chair in
Münster. I would like to quote at least a few significant phrases of
his important address. Metz says: "The crisis reached by European
Christianity is no longer primarily or at least exclusively an ecclesial
crisis.... The crisis is more profound: it is not only rooted in the
situation of the Church: the crisis has become a crisis of God. To sum
up, one could say 'religion yes', 'God no', where this 'no', in turn, is
not meant in the categorical sense of the great forms of atheism. There
are no longer any great forms of atheism. Today's atheism can
effectively return to speaking of God—distractedly
or calmly—without really intending him [his
person].... Furthermore, the Church has her own concept of immunization
against the crisis of God. She no longer speaks today of God—as,
for example, she still did at the Second Vatican Council—but
only—as she did at the Council—of
God proclaimed through the Church. The crisis of God is codified
ecclesiologically". Words like this from the mouth of the creator
of political theology cannot fail to capture our attention. They rightly
remind us that the Second Vatican Council was not only an
ecclesioiogical Council, but that first and foremost, spoke of God, and
this not only within Christianity, but to the world, of the God who is
the God of all, who saves all and is accessible to all. Perhaps the
Second Vatican Council, as Metz seems to say, only accepted half the
legacy of the First Vatican Council? Obviously a treatment of the
ecclesiology of the Council has to deal with this question.

Basic Thesis

Right now I want to state my basic thesis: the Second Vatican Council
clearly wanted to speak of the Church within the discourse on God, to
subordinate the discourse on the Church to the discourse on God and to
offer an ecclesiology that would be theo-logical in a true sense. Until
now, however, the way the Council was received has ignored this
qualifying characteristic in favour of individual ecclesiological
affirmations; it has highlighted single phrases that are easy to repeat,
and has thus fallen away from the broad horizons of the Council Fathers.
Something similar can be said about the first text on which the Second
Vatican Council focused—the Constitution on
the Sacred Liturgy. The fact that it was placed at the beginning was
basically due to pragmatic motives. But retrospectively, it must be said
that it has a deeper meaning within the structure of the Council:
adoration comes first. Therefore God comes first.

This introduction corresponds to the norm of the Benedictine Rule: Operi
Deinihil praeponatur [Let nothing be placed before the work
of God, the divine office]. As the second text of the Council, the
Constitution on the Church should be consideredas inwardly
connected with the text on the liturgy. The Church is guided by prayer,
by the mission of glorifying God. By its nature, ecclesiology is
connected with the liturgy. It is, therefore, logical that the third
Constitution should speak of the Word of God that convokes the Church
and renews her in every age. The fourth Constitution shows how the
glorification of God is realized in the active life, since the light
received from God is carried into the world and only in this way becomes
fully the glorification of God. In the history of the post-Conciliar
period, the Constitution on the Liturgy was certainly no longer
understood from the viewpoint of the basic primacy of adoration, but
rather as a recipe book of what we can do with the Liturgy. In the
meantime, the fact that the Liturgy is actually "made" for God
and not for ourselves, seems to have escaped the minds of those who are
busy pondering how to give the Liturgy an ever more attractive and
communicable shape, actively involving an ever greater number of people.
However the more we make it for ourselves, the less attractive it is,
because everyone perceives clearly that the essential focus on God has
increasingly been lost.

Partial Interpretations

As regards the ecclesioiogy of Lumen gentium, certain key
words continue to be kept in mind: the idea of the People of God, the
collegiality of the bishops as a reappraisal of the bishops' ministry in
relation to the primacy of the Pope, the reappraisal of the local
Churches in relation to the universal Church, the ecumenical openness of
the concept of Church and openness to other religions, lastly, the
question of the specific position of the Catholic Church, expressed in
the formula which holds that the Church, defined in the Creed as one,
holy, catholic and apostolic, subsistit in Ecclesia catholica.
For now I will leave the famous formula untranslated, because—as
was foreseen—it has received the most
contradictory explanations—which range from
the idea that it expresses the uniqueness of the Catholic Church united
to the Pope to the idea that it expresses the equivalency of the other
Christian Churches with the Catholic Church and that the Catholic Church
has given up her claim of being distinctive. In the early stages of the
reception of the Council, the concept of "People of God"
predominated together with the theme of collegiality; the term
"people" was understood in terms of ordinary political usage;
later in the context of liberation theology it was understood in terms
of the Marxist use of the term people as opposed to the dominating
classes, and even more widely, in the sense of the sovereignty of the
people, which would now finally be applied to the Church. This in turn
gave rise to broad discussions about her structures, in which People of
God was interpreted, according to the situation, either in a more
Western way as "democratization", or in the Eastern European
way as "popular democracy". Gradually these "verbal
fireworks" (N. Lohfink) around the concept of People of God burned
out, on the one hand, and above all because the power games became empty
and had to make room for ordinary work in parish councils, and, on the
other, because sound theological work has incontrovertibly shown that
the politicization of a concept that comes from a totally different
context cannot be supported. As a result of his careful exegetic
analyses, the exegete of Bocum, Werner Berg, to take one example,
states: "Despite the small number of passages that contain the
expression 'People of God', from this point of view 'People of God' is a
rare biblical expression, but nevertheless a common idea emerges: the
phrase 'People of God' expresses 'kinship' with God, a relationship with
God, the link between God and what is designated as 'People of God',
hence a 'vertical orientation'. The expression lends itself less to
describe the hierarchical structure of this community, especially if the
'People of God' is described as a 'counterpart' to the ministers....
Nor, starting with its biblical significance, does the expression lend
itself to a cry of protest against the ministers: 'We are the People of
God'". Josef Meyer zu Schlotern, the professor of fundamental
theology of Paderborn, concludes the examination of the discussion about
the concept of "People of God" by observing that the
Constitution on the Church of the Second Vatican Council ends the
pertinent chapter in such a way as "to outline the Trinitarian
structure as the foundation of the ultimate definition of the Church
...". Thus the discussion is led back to the essential point: the
Church does not exist for herself, but must be God's instrument, in
order to gather man to Himself to prepare for the moment when "God
will be all in all" (I Cor 15,28). It was the concept of God that
lost out in the "fireworks" sparked by the expression, and in
this way the expression, People of God, lost its meaning. In fact, a
Church that exists for herself alone is superfluous.And people
notice it immediately. The crisis of the Church as it is reflected in
the concept of People of God, is a "crisis of God"; it is the
consequence of abandoning the essential. What remains is merely a
struggle for power, There is enough of this elsewhere in the world,
there is no need of the Church for this.

Ecclesiology of Communion

It can certainly besaid that, at the time of the
extraordinary Synod of 1985, which was to attempt an evaluation of the
20 yearsfollowing the Council, there appeared a new effort to
sum up conciliar ecclesiology in a basic concept: the ecclesiologyof
communio. I received this new focus of ecclesiology with joy and
did my best to prepare it. Even so, it should be recognized first of all
that the word communio does not have a central position in the
Council. But if it is properly understood it can serve as a synthesis
for the essential elements of conciliar ecclesiology. All of the
essential elements of the Christian concept of communio are
combined in the famous text of I Jn 1,3, which can be taken as the
criterion for the correct Christian understanding of communion:
"That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that
you also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the
Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our
joy may be complete". Here the starting point of communio isbrought to the fore: the encounter with the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, who comes to men and women through the Church's proclamation. So
there arises communion among human beings, which in turn is based on communio
with the Triune God. We have access to communion with God through
the realization of the communion of God with man which is Christ in
person; the encounter with Christ creates communion with him and thus
with the Father in the Holy Spirit; and from this point unites human
beings with one another. The purpose of all this is full joy: the Church
carries an eschatological dynamic within her. In the words "full
joy", we can glimpse a reference to the farewell discourse of
Jesus, to the Easter mystery and to the return of the Lord in his Easter
appearances, which prepare for his full return in the new world:
"You will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be
sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy ... I will see you
again and your hearts will rejoice .... ask,and you will
receive, that your joy may be full" (Jn 16; 20; 22; 24). If the
last sentence is compared with Lk 11,13—the
invitation to prayer in Luke—it clearly
appears that "joy" and "Holy Spirit" are one and the
same, and that the word "joy" in I Jn 1, 3, conceals the Holy
Spirit who is not expressly mentioned here. The word communio
therefore, based on the biblical context has a theological,
Christological, salvation historical and ecclesiological character. It
therefore has within it the sacramental dimension which in Paul appears
explicitly: "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a
participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one Bread,
we who are many are one body..." (I Cor 10,16 f.). The ecclesiology
of communion is a profoundly Eucharistic ecclesiology. It is thus very
close to the Eucharistic ecclesiology which Orthodox theologians have
developed convincingly in our century. Ecclesiology becomes more
concrete and at the same time remains totally spiritual, transcendent
and eschatological. In the Eucharist Christ, present in the bread and
wine and giving himself ever anew, builds the Church as his body and
through his risen body unites us to the Triune God and to one another.
The Eucharist is celebrated in different places, and yet at the same
time it is universal, because there is only one Christ and only one body
of Christ. The Eucharist includes the priestly service of the repraesentatio
Christi and thus the network of service, the synthesis of unity and
multiplicity, which is already expressed in the word communio. Thus
it can be said without a doubt that the concept incorporates an
ecclesiological synthesis, which unites the discourse on the Church with
the discourse on God and with life from God and with God, a synthesis
that takes up all the essential intentions of the Second Vatican
Council's ecclesiology and connects them in the right way.

For these reasons I was grateful and pleased when the Synod of 1985
made the concept of communion once again the focus of reflection.
However, the years that followed show that no word is safe from
misunderstandings, not even the best and most profound.

Partial Interpretations

To the extentthat communio became an easy slogan, it
was devalued and distorted. As with the concept of "People of
God", here too a gradual "horizontalism" should be
pointed out, with the giving up of the idea of God. The ecclesiology of
communion began to be reduced to the theme of the relationship between
the local Church and the universal Church, which in turn degenerated
gradually into the problem of the division of the areasof
competence between them. Of course, the egalitarian cause, which claimed
that there could only be complete equality in communio, was again
disseminated. Thus once again the disciples' discussion on who was the
greatest became operative, which, of course, will not be settled in any
generation. Mark mentions it with the greatest insistence. On the way to
Jerusalem, Jesus had spoken for the third time to the disciples about
his forthcoming Passion. On arriving in Capernaum he asked them what
they had been discussing on the way. "But they were silent",
for they had been discussing which of them was the greatest—a
sort of discussion of primacy (Mk 9,33-37). Isn't it still the same
today? As the Lord walks towards his Passion, while the Church, he
himself within her, is suffering, we reflect on our favourite theme, the
discussion of our rights of precedence. And if he were to come among us
and ask us what we were discussing along the way, how embarrassed and
silent we would have to be!

This does not mean that the Church should not also discuss the proper
order and designation of responsibilities; and naturally, imbalances
will always be found in her that will require correction. Of course,
there can be an excessive Roman centralism, which must be identified and
purified. But such matters cannot detract from the Church's true task:
the Church must not speak primarily of herself but of God; and only in
order that this may happen with integrity, there are also certain
intra-ecclesial criticisms for which the connecting of her discourse on
God and on common service must provide the proper direction. Finally, it
is not by accident that what Jesus said about the last becoming first
and the first becoming last returns in various contexts of the
evangelical tradition—as a mirror, that
always reflects everyone.

CDF Letter on Communion

To confront the reduction of the concept of communio which has
taken place since 1985, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
saw fit to prepare a Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on
"Some Aspects of the Church Understood as Communion", which
was published on 28 June 1992.

Since it now seems to have become obligatory for theologians who want
to make a big name for themselves to offer a negative appraisal of the
documents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, theologians
created a storm of criticism over it from which it could hardly recover.
It was the sentence that said that the universal Church is a reality
that in its essential mystery is logically and ontologically prior to
the particular Churches that was singled out for criticism. In the text,
this was supported concisely by recalling that, according to the
Fathers, the Church which is one and unique precedes creation and gives
birth to the particular Churches (n. 9). Thus the Fathers take up a
rabbinical theology which had conceived of the Torah and Israel as
pre-existent: creation was considered to be so conceived that there
would be room in it for God's will; but this would require a people who
would live in accord with God's will and make it the light of the world.
Since the Fathers were convinced of the ultimate identity between the
Church and Israel, they could not see in the Church something that took
place by chance at the last hour, but recognized in the gathering of the
peoples in accord with God's will, the internal purpose of creation. The
image is broadened and deepened on the basis of Christology: history—again
in relation to the Old Testament—is explained as a love story between
God and man. God finds and prepares a bride for his Son, the single
bride who is the unique Church. Starting from the word of Genesis, that
the man and his wife will become "one flesh" (Gn 2,24), the
image of the bride is united with the idea of the Church as the body of
Christ, a metaphor which in turn comes from the Eucharistic liturgy. The
one body of Christ is prepared; Christ and the Church will be two
"in one flesh", one body and thus "God will be all in
all". This ontological precedence of the universal Church, the one
Church, the one body, the one bride, over the concrete empirical
realizations in the particular Churches seems to me so obvious that I
find it hard to understand the objections to it. Indeed it seems to me
that they are only possible if one does not want to see, or no longer
succeeds in seeing, the great Church conceived by God—perhaps out of
desperation at her earthly inadequacy—; she now appears as a
theological fancy, so all that remains is the empirical image of the
Church in the mutual relations and conflicts of the particular Churches.
But this means that the Church as a theological subject has been
obliterated. If from now on the Church can only be recognized in her
human organization, then, in fact, all that is left is desolation. But
then one has not only abandoned the ecclesiology of the Fathers, but
also that of the New Testament and the conception of Israel in the Old
Testament.

In the New Testament, however, it is not necessary to wait for the
Deutero-Pauline Epistles and the Apocalypse to find the ontological
priority—reaffirmed by the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith—of the universal
Church in relation to the particular Churches. In the heart of the great
Pauline letters, in the Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle does not
speaks to us of the heavenly Jerusalem as of a great eschatological
reality, but as of one that precedes us: "But the Jerusalem above
is our mother" (Gal 4,26). In this regard, H. Schlier points out
that for Paul, as for the Jewish tradition from which he draws
inspiration, the heavenly Jerusalem is the new aeon. However, for the
Apostle, this new aeon is already present "in the Christian Church.
This is for him the heavenly Jerusalem in her children".

Lucan Vision of the Church

Even though the ontological priority of the one Church cannot
seriously be denied, the question concerning her temporal priority is
certainly more difficult. The Letter of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith is referring here to the Lucan image of the birth
of the Church at Pentecost through the work of the Holy Spirit. There is
no intention to discuss the question of the historical aspect of this
account. What matters is the theological affirmation which Luke has at
heart. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith called attention
to the fact that the Church began in the community of the 120 gathered
around Mary, especially in the renewed community of the Twelve, who are
not members of a local Church, but the Apostles who will take the Gospel
to the ends of the earth. As a further clarification, one can add that
in their number, 12, they are both the old and the new Israel, the one
Israel of God, which now—as atthe outset was fundamentally
contained in the concept of the People of God, is extended to all the
nations and founds the unique People of God among all peoples. This
reference is reinforced by two other elements: the Church at the time of
her birth already speaks all languages. The Fathers of the Church have
rightly interpreted this account of the miracle of tongues as an
anticipation of the Catholica—the Church from the very first
moment is oriented kat'holon—she embraces the whole universe.
The counterpart to this is Luke's description of the multitude of those
who listened as pilgrims coming from all over the earth on the basis of
the table of 12 peoples, by which he intends to allude to the
all-inclusiveness of the hearers. Luke has enriched this Hellenistic
table of peoples with a 13th name: the Romans, with which he doubtless
wanted to stress once more the idea of the Orbis. The precise meaning of
the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is not fully
conveyed when a German theologian says of it that the original community
of Jerusalem was in fact the universal Church and the local Church at
the same time, and then continues: "This certainly represents a
Lucan elaboration, in fact, in the historical perspective presumably
several communities existed from the very start, with communities in
Galilee alongside the community of Jerusalem". Here it is not a
matter of the question, ultimately insoluble for us, of when and exactly
where Christian communities came into being for the first time, but of
the interior beginning of the Church, which Luke wants to describe and
which he attributes, over and apart from any empirically verifiable
fact, to the power of the Holy Spirit. However it does not do justice to
the Lucan account to say that the original community of Jerusalem was
simultaneously the universal Church and the local Church. The first
reality in St Luke's account is not an indigenous community of
Jerusalem; rather, the first reality is that in the Twelve, the old
Israel which is unique becomes the new one, and this one Israel of God,
through the miracle of tongues, even before it becomes the
representation of the local Church of Jerusalem, is now revealed as a
unity that embraces all time and places. In the pilgrims present who
came from all countries, it immediately encompasses all the peoples of
the world. Perhaps it is not necessary to overemphasize the question of
the temporal priority of the universal Church which Luke clearly
presents in his account. What is important is that at the beginning the
Church is generated in the Twelve by the one Spirit for all peoples,
hence even from the first moment she is directed to being in all
cultures, and thus to being the one People of God: she is not a local
community that grows gradually, but the leaven that is always destined
to permeate the whole, and consequently, embodies universality from the
first instant.

Resistance to the affirmations of the pre-eminence of the universal
Church in relation to the particular Churches is difficult to understand
and even impossible to understand theologically. It only becomes
understandable on the basis of a suspicion: "The formula becomes
totally problematic if the one universal Church is tacitly identified
with the Roman Church, de facto with the Pope and the Curia. If
this occurs, then the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith cannot be understood as an aid to the clarification of the
ecclesiology of communion, but must be understood as its abandonment and
an endeavour to restore the centralism of Rome". In this text the
identification of the universal Church with the Pope and the Curia is
first introduced as a hypothesis, as a risk, but then seems de facto to
have been attributed to the Letter of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, which thus appears as a kind of theological
restoration, thereby diverging from the Second Vatican Council. This
interpretative leap is surprising, but obviously represents a widespread
suspicion; it gives voice to an accusation heard everywhere, and
expresses succinctly a growing inability to portray anything concrete
under the name of universal Church, under the elements of the one, holy,
catholic of the Church. The Pope and the Curia are the only elements
that can be identified, and if one exalts them inordinately from the
theological point of view, it is understandable that some may feel
threatened.

Council on the universal Church

Thus we find ourselves concretely, after what is only apparently anexcursus, facing the question of the interpretation of the Council.
We now ask the following question: what really was the idea of the
Council on the universal Church? It cannot be rightly said that the
Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith tacitly
identifies the universal Church with the Roman Church, or de facto
with the Pope and the Curia. The temptation to do so arises if at the
start the local Church of Jerusalem and the universal Church had already
been identified, that is, if the concept of Church has been reduced to
that of the communities that are empirically discernible, and if one has
lost sight of its theological depth. It is helpful to return with these
questions to the text of the Council itself. The first sentence of the
Constitution on the Church immediately explains that the Council does
not consider the Church as a reality closed in on herself, but sees her
in a Christological perspective: "Christ is the light of the
nations; and it is, accordingly, the heartfelt desire of this sacred
Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that ... the light
of Christ, reflected on the face of the Church, may enlighten all
men". With this background we can understand the image used in the
theology of the Fathers, who see the Church as the moon that does not
shine with its own light, but reflects the light of Christ the sun.
Ecclesiology is shown to be dependent upon Christology and connected
with it. But since no one can speak correctly of Christ, of the Son,
without at the same time speaking of the Father, and, since it is
impossible to speak correctly ofthe Father and the Son without
listening to the Holy Spirit, the Christological vision of the Church
necessarily expands to become a Trinitarian ecclesiology (Lumen
gentium, nn. 2-4). The discourse on the Church is a discourse on
God, and only in this way is it correct. In this Trinitarian ouverture,
which offers the key to a correct interpretation of the whole text, we
learn what the one, holy Church is, starting with and in all her
concrete historical phenomena, and what "universal Church"
should mean. This is further explained when we are subsequently shown
the Church's inner dynamism towards the kingdom of God. Precisely
because the Church is to be theo-logically understood, she is always
transcending herself; she is the gathering for the kingdom of God, the
breaking-in of the kingdom. Then the different images of the Church are
briefly presented, which all describe the unique Church, whether she is
described as the bride, the house of God, his family, the temple, the
holy city, our mother, the Jerusalem which is above or God's flock, etc.
This, ultimately, becomes even more concrete. We are given a very
practical answer to the question: what is this, this one universal
Church which ontologically and temporally precedes the local Churches?
Where is she? Where can we see her act?

Baptism and Eucharist

The Constitution answers, speaking to us of the sacraments. First
comes Baptism: it is a Trinitarian event, in other words , totally
theological, far more than a socialization bound up with the local
Church; this, unfortunately, is a common distortion. Baptism does not
derive from the local community; rather through Baptism the door of the
one Church is opened to us, it is the presence of the one Church and can
only flow from her, from the heavenly Jerusalem, from the new mother. In
this regard, the well known ecumenist, Vinzenz Pfnür, recently said:
"Baptism is being incorporated into the 'one' body of Christ,
opened up for us through the Cross (Eph 2,16), in which we ... are all
baptized by means of the one Spirit (I Cor 12,13), that is, it is
essentially more than the baptismal announcement in use in many places:
"we have received into our community…" We come to belong to
this one body through Baptism, "which should not be replaced by
membership in a local Church, The 'one' bride and the 'one' episcopate
also belong to it ... in which one participates, according to Cyprian,
only within the communion of bishops". In Baptism the universal
Church continuously precedes the local Church and builds her. Because of
this, the Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on communio
can say that there are no strangers in the Church: everyone is at
home everywhere, and is not just a guest. The Church is always the one
Church, one and the same. Whoever is baptized in Berlin, is as much at
home in the Church in Rome or New York or Kinshasa or Bangalore or in
any other place, as he is in the Church where he was baptized. He does
not have to register for Baptism again, the Church is one. Baptism comes
from her and gives birth within her. Whoever speaks of Baptism, speaks
of, and, by that very fact, treats of the Word of God, which for the
whole Church is only one and continuously precedes her in all places,
summons her and builds her up. This Word is above the Church, yet it is
in her, entrusted to her as a living subject. To be effectively present
in history, the Word needs this subject, but this subject on her part
does not subsist without the vital life-giving force of the Word, which
first makes her a subject. When we speak of the Word of God, we also
mean the Creed, which is at the heart of the baptismal event; it is also
the way in which the Church receives the Word and makes it her own, in a
certain way it is a word and also a response. Here too, the universal
Church, the one Church, is present in a concrete way, and can be
perceived as such.

The conciliar text passes from Baptism to the Eucharist, in which
Christ gives his body and thus makes us his body. This body is one, and
so again for every local Church the Eucharist is the place of
incorporation into the one Christ, the becoming-one of all communicants
in the universal communio, which unites heaven and earth, the
living and the dead, past, present and future, and opens up into
eternity. The Eucharist is not born from the local Church and does not
end in her. It continuously shows that Christ comes to us from outside,
through our closed doors; the Church comes to us continuously from
outside, from the total, unique body of Christ and leads us into it.
This extranos of the sacrament is also revealed in the
ministry of the Bishop and of the priest: the truth that the Eucharist
needs the sacrament of priestly service is founded precisely in the fact
that the community cannot give itself the Eucharist; it must receive it
from the Lord through the mediation of the one Church. Apostolic
succession, which constitutes the priestly ministry, implies at the same
time the synchronic aspect and diachronic aspects of the concept of
Church: belonging to the whole history of the faith from the Apostles
and being in communion with all who let themselves be gathered by the
Lord in his body. The Constitution on the Church has notably treated the
episcopal ministry in chapter three, and explained its meaning starting
with the fundamental concept of the collegium. This concept,
which only marginally appears in tradition, serves to illustrate the
interior unity of the episcopal ministry. The bishop is not a bishop as
an individual, but by belonging to a body, a college, which in turn
represents the historical continuity of the collegiumApostolorum.
In this sense, the episcopal ministry derives from the one Church and
leads into it. Precisely here it becomes evident that there is no
opposition between the local Church and the universal Church. The Bishop
represents the one Church in the local Church, and builds up the one
Church while he builds up the local Church and awakens her particular
gifts for the benefit of the whole body. The ministry of the Successor
of Peter is a particular form of episcopal ministry connected in a
special way with responsibility for the unity of the whole Church. But
Peter's ministry and responsibility would not even be able to exist hadthe universal Church not existed first. In fact he would have been
moving in a void and representing an absurd claim. Without a doubt the
right relationship between episcopate and primacy must be continuously
rediscovered, even through hard work and suffering. However, this quest
is only correctly formulated when it is seen in relation to the primacy
of the Church's specific mission and, in every age, when it is oriented
to and subordinated to it: that is, to the duty to bring God to men and
men to God. The Church's goal is the Gospel, around which everything
else must revolve,

'Subsistit in': Church of Christ 'subsists in' Catholic Church

At this point I would like to interrupt my analysis of the concept of
communio and at least briefly take a stance regarding the most
disputed point of Lumen gentium: the meaning of the disputed
sentence ofLumen gentium, n. 8, which teaches that the
uniqueChurch of Christ, which we confess in the Creed as one,
holy, catholic and apostolic, "subsists" in the Catholic
Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the bishops
in communion with him. In 1985 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith was forced to adopt a position with regard to this text, because
of a book by Leonardo Boff in which he supported the idea that the one
Church of Christ as she subsists in the Roman Catholic Church could also
subsist in other Christian Churches. It is superfluous to say that the
statement of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was met with
stinging criticism and then later put aside.

In the attempt to reflect on where we stand today in the reception of
the Council's ecclesiology, the question of the interpretation of the subsistit
is inevitable, and on this subject the postconciliar Magisterium's
single official pronouncement, that is, the Notification I just
mentioned, cannot be ignored. Looking back from the perspective of 15
years, it emerges more clearly that it was not so much the question of a
single theological author, but of a vision of the Church that was put
forward in a variety of ways and which is still current today. The
clarification of 1985 presented the context of Boff's thesis at great
length. We do not need to examine these details further, because we have
something more fundamental at heart. The thesis, which at the time had
Boff as its proponent, could be described as ecclesiological relativism.
It finds its justification in the theory that the "historical
Jesus" would not as such have conceived the idea of a Church, nor
much less have founded one. The Church, as a historical reality, would
have only come into existence after the resurrection, on account of the
loss of the eschatological tension towards the immediate coming of the
kingdom, caused in its turn by the inevitable sociological needs of
institutionalization. In the beginning, a universal Catholic Church
would certainly not have existed, but only different local Churches with
different theologies, different ministers, etc. No institutional Church
could, therefore, say that she was that one Church of Jesus Christ
desired by God himself; all institutional forms thus stem from
sociological needs and as such are human constructions which can and
even must be radically changed again in new situations. In their
theological quality they are only different in a very secondary way, so
one might say that in all of them or at least in many, the "one
Church of Christ" subsists; with regard to this hypothesis the
question naturally arises: in this vision, what right does one have to
speak at all of the one Church of Christ?

Instead, Catholic tradition has chosen another starting point: it
puts its confidence in the Evangelists and believes in them. It is
obvious then that Jesus who proclaimed the kingdom of God would gather
disciples around him for its realization; he not only gave them his Word
as a new interpretation of the Old Testament, but in the sacrament of
the Last Supper he gave them the gift of a new unifying centre, through
which all who profess to be Christians can become one with him in a
totally new way, so that Paul could designate this communion as being
one body with Christ, as the unity of one body in the Spirit. It then
becomes obvious that the promise of the Holy Spirit was not a vague
announcement but brought about the reality of Pentecost, hence the fact
that the Church was not conceived of and established by men, but created
by means of the Holy Spirit, whose creation she is and continues to be.

As a result, however, the institution and the Spirit have a very
different relationship in the Church than that which the trends of
thought I just mentioned would like to suggest to us. The institution is
not merely a structure that can be changed or demolished at will, which
would have nothing to do with the reality of faith as such. This form of
bodiliness [body of Christ] belongs to the Church herself. Christ's
Church is not hidden invisibly behind the manifold human configurations,
but really exists, as a true and proper Church which is manifest in the
profession of faith, in the sacraments and in apostolic succession.

The Second Vatican Council, with the formula of the subsistit in
accord with Catholic tradition wanted to teach the exact opposite of
"ecclesiological relativism": the Church of Jesus Christ truly
exists. He himself willed her, and the Holy Spirit has continuously
created her since Pentecost, in spite of being faced with every human
failing, and sustains her in her essential identity. The institution is
not an inevitable but theologically unimportant or even harmful
externalization, but belongs in its essential core to the concrete
character of the Incarnation. The Lord keeps his word: "The gates
of hell shall not prevail against her".

Council: 'subsistit in' explains Church as concrete subject

At this point it becomes necessary to investigate theword subsistit
somewhat more carefully. With this expression, the Council differs
from the formula of Pius XII, who said in his Encyclical Mystici
Corporis Christi: "The Catholic Church "is" (est) the
one mystical body of Christ". The difference between subsistit
and est concelas within itself the whole ecumenical problem. The
word subsistit derives from the ancient philosophy as later
developed in Scholastic philosophy. The Greek word hypostasis
that has a central role in Christology to describe the union of the
divine and the human nature in the Person of Christ comes from that
vision. Subsistere is a special case of esse. It is being
in the form of a subject who has an autonomous existence. Here it is a
question precisely of this. The Council wants to tell us that the Church
of Jesus Christ as a concrete subject in this world can be found in the
Catholic Church. This can take place only once, and the idea that the subsistit
could be multiplied fails to grasp precisely the notion that is being
intended. With the word subsistit, the Council wished to explain
the unicity of the Catholic Church and the fact of her inability to be
multiplied: the Church exists as a subject in historical reality.

The difference between subsistit and est however
contains the tragedy of ecclesial division. Although the Church is only
one and "subsists" in a unique subject, there are also
ecclesial realities beyond this subject—true
local Churches and different ecclesial communities. Because sin is a
contradiction, this difference between subsistit and est
cannot be fully resolved from the logical viewpoint. The paradox of the
difference between the unique and concrete character of the Church, on
the one hand, and, on the other, the existence of an ecclesial reality
beyond the one subject, reflects the contradictory nature of human sin
and division. This division is something totally different from the
relativistic dialectic described above in which the division of
Christians loses its painful aspect and in fact is not a rupture, but
only the manifestation of multiple variations on a single theme, in
which all the variations are in a certain way right and wrong. An
intrinsic need to seek unity does not then exist, because in any event
the one Church really is everywhere and nowhere. Thus Christianity would
actually exist only in the dialectic correlation of various antitheses.
Ecumenism consists in the fact that in some way all recognize one
another, because all are supposed to be only fragmentsof
Christian reality. Ecumenism would therefore be the resignation to a
relativistic dialectic, because the Jesus of history belongs to the past
and the truth in any case remains hidden.

The vision of the Council is quite different: the fact that in the
Catholic Church is present the subsistit of the one subject the
Church, is not at all the merit of Catholics, but is solely God's work,
which he makes endure despite the continuous unworthiness of the human
subjects. They cannot boast of anything, but can only admire the
fidelity of God, with shame for their sins and at the same time great
thanks. But the effect of their own sins can be seen: the whole world
sees the spectacle of the divided and opposing Christian communities,
reciprocally making their own claims to truth and thus clearly
frustrating the prayer of Christ on the eve of his Passion. Whereas
division as a historical reality can be perceived by each person, the
subsistence of the one Church in the concrete form of the Catholic
Church can be seen as such only through faith.

Since the Second Vatican Council was conscious of this paradox, it
proclaimed the duty of ecumenism as a search for true unity, and
entrusted it to the Church of the future.

Conclusion: call to holiness

I come to my conclusion. Anyone who desires to understand the
approach of the Council's ecclesiology cannot ignore chapters 4-7 of the
Constitution, which speak of the laity, the universal call to holiness,
religious, and the eschatological orientation of the Church. In these
chapters the intrinsic purpose once again comes to the fore: that is,
all that is most essential to her existence: it is a question of
holiness, of conformity to God, that there be room in the world for God,
that he dwell in it and thus that the world become his
"kingdom". Holiness is something more than a moral quality. It
is the dwelling of God with men, and of men with God, God's
"tent" among us and in our midst (Jn 1,14). It is the new
birth—not of flesh and blood, but of God (Jn
1,13). The movement toward holiness is identical with the eschatological
movement and indeed, from the standpoint of Jesus' message, is now
fundamental to the Church. The Church exists so that she may become
God's dwelling place in the world and thus be "holiness": it
is this for which one should compete in the Church—not
for a given rank in rights of precedence, or for occupying the first
places. All this is taken up and formed into a synthesis in the last
chapter of the Constitution, that presents Mary, the Mother of the Lord.

Marian Vision

At first sight the insertion of Mariology in ecclesiology, which the
Council decided upon, could seem somewhat accidental. In fact it is
true, from the historical viewpoint, that a rather small majority of the
Fathers voted for the inclusion of Mariology. But from the inner logic
of their vote, their decision corresponds perfectly to the movement of
the whole Constitution: only if this correlation is grasped, can one
correctly grasp the image of the Church which the Council wished to
portray. In this decision the research of Hugo Rahner, A Muller, R
Laurentin and Karl Delahaye played a great part, and thanks to them
Mariology and ecclesiology were both renewed and more deeply expounded.
Hugo Rahner, in particular, showed in a magnificent way from the sources
that Mariology in its entirety was first thought of and established by
the Fathers as ecclesiology: the Church is virgin and mother, she was
conceived without sin and bears the burden of history, she suffers and
yet is taken up into heaven. Very slowly there develops later the notion
that the Church is anticipated in Mary, she is personified in Mary and
that vice versa Mary is not an isolated individual closed in on herself,
but carries within her the whole mystery of the Church. The person is
not closed individualistically nor is the community understood as a
collectivity in an impersonal way: both inseparably overlap. This
already applies to the woman in the Apocalypse, as she appears in
chapter 12: it is not right to limit this figure exclusively and
individualistically to Mary, because in her we contemplate together the
whole People of God, the old and new Israel, which suffers and is
fruitful in suffering; nor is it right to exclude from this image Mary,
the Mother of the Redeemer. Thus the overlapping of individual and
community, as we find it in this text, anticipates the identification of
Mary and the Church that was gradually developed in the theology of the
Fathers and finally taken up by the Council. The fact that the two were
later separated, that Mary was seen as an individual filled with
privileges and therefore infinitely beyond our reach where the Church in
turn [was seen] in an impersonal and purely institutional manner, has
caused equal damage to both Mariology and Ecclesiology. Here are active
the divisions brought about by Western thought in particular, and which
otherwise would have their own good reasons. But if we want to
understand the Church and Mary properly, we must go back to the time
before these divisions, in order to understand the supra-individual
nature of the person and the supra-institutional nature of the
community, precisely where person and community are taken back to their
origins, grounded in the power of the Lord, the new Adam. The Marian
vision of the Church and the ecclesial, salvation-historical vision of
Mary take us back ultimately to Christ and to the Trinitarian God,
because it is here that we find revealed what holiness means, what is
God's dwelling in man and in the world, what we should understand by the
"eschatological" tension of the Church. Thus it is only the
chapter on Mary that leads conciliar ecclesiology to its fulfilment and
brings us back to its Christological and Trinitarian starting point.

To give a taste of the Fathers' theology, I would like as a
conclusion to propose a text of St Ambrose, chosen by Hugo Rahner:
"So stand on the firm ground of your heart!... What standing means,
the Apostle taught us, Moses wrote it: 'The place on which you stand is
holy ground'. No one stands except the one who stands firm in the faith
... and yet another word is written: 'But you, stand firm with me'. You
stand firm with me, if you stand in the Church. The Church is holy
ground on which we must stand.... So stand firm, stand in the Church,
stand there, where I want to appear to you. There I will stay beside
you. Where the Church is, there is the stronghold of your heart. On the
Church are laid the foundations of your soul. Indeed I appeared to you
in the Church as once in the burning bush. You are the bush, I am the
fire. Like the fire in the bush I am in your flesh. I am fire to
enlighten you; to burn away the thorns of your sins, to give you the
favour of my grace".

Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
19 September 2001, page 5

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